He knows we should otherwise be lost, and urging us toward the only right way. Let us never despair : for behold this wanderer was reduced to the food of swine, and not enough of that, and yet returned, recovered, and was pardoned. Yet let us walk in great fear and trembling: for after all, as I shall shew you another day, his was a very narrow escape: and though told us for our comfort, is full likewise of aweful warnings.

SERMON XLIV.

THE PRODIGAL SON.

III.

S. LUKE XV. 17, 18, 19.

"And when he came to himself he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough, and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants."

We have considered the wanderings and the distress of the young man in our Lord's parable: his wanderings and extravagance being the type of our sins; his distress and famine, the type of our misery and helplessness, the natural effect of our sins, and the just judgement of God upon them. The next part of the parable sets before us his repentance; the type of ours. When he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger." "He came to himself." This gives us to understand that his condition before was that of one beside himself. His whole soul was weakened, confused, bewildered, by the extremity of his misery. The famine had

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made his very appetite unnatural, like the cravings of a brute beast. "He would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat." So it is with the habitual, deadly sinner when he finds that the world and the flesh fail him, but as yet has no heart to turn to God in earnest. He plunges lower and lower in base pleasures. He would fain fill himself with the very husks. He goes on till you would think him beside himself: and so indeed in one sense he is: his mind and senses out of order, his appetites all false and distempered, nothing appearing to him as it really is. This is the condition we bring ourselves to, by giving entire way, though it be but to one mortal sin. Yet all the while, if we would but believe it, our remedy is within our reach. That prodigal, had he chosen it, might have turned his thoughts at any time towards his first and true home. So the fallen Christian, as long as it pleases God to continue him within reach of His Gospel and Sacraments, may turn his thoughts, if he will, towards his Saviour. Well for him, if he do so before he come to that extreme point of misery: but even then, if he repent in earnest, it is not too late. This is what our Saviour so graciously teaches in the next part of the parable. The prodigal "came to himself:" he recovered his senses: he had a chance given him of not going on, like a castaway, with the swine for ever, and what is the first token of his better mind? He thinks of his father's house. The happy remembrances of his innocent childhood come strong upon him, and take place of the diseased and miserable dreamings which had possessed him of late. He thinks of it as his home; he loses for a moment the sense of his distance from it,

and of the frightful and wretched things which are now around him; he says to himself, what if I were there once again? He thinks of the order which is there father and children, master and servants, every one knowing his place: whereas in the wild and famished country, to which he had wandered, all was confusion and irregularity. He thinks of the peace and quiet of that sober household; so different from the brawling and disturbance, so sure to prevail where riotous living is. He thinks of the plenty in which he had been brought up: "the meanest of the hired servants there has bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger." So when a backsliding Christian turns his mind by God's grace to the merciful voice ever sounding in his ears, and begins to repent in earnest; how moving are the thoughts and remembrances of his earlier and better days! how he was taught and led, week by week and season by season, to serve God in His Church: how he was used, night and morning, to say his prayers on his knees: how quietly and contentedly the time passed with him, what peace he enjoyed, both towards other men and with his own heart, before he gave way to his restless and shameful passions: what a joy to him, then, to think of God and His Angels, and of Saints and good men in Heaven and in earth, watching him with kind and approving eyes. He thinks of the plenty of graces and blessings which in those days God offered him one after another in their due season, Baptism, Confirmation, all the holy services of the Church: and more especially of the Holy Communion, "bread enough and to spare," to which he might then draw near continually. And

as in the parable that unfortunate son, on coming to himself, thought of no one so much as of his father, it was his father's bread that he longed for, his father's house, his father's servants, his father's forgiving countenance: so the one thought which fills the penitent's heart is the thought of God Almighty as being still his Father: he yearns after his place in the Church, and all the comforts and joys of his innocent young days, because there his Father, his Heavenly Father was: His gracious Presence was the root of all the blessings: if they are ever to return, it can only be by His owning us as children again. This indeed is the difference between true repentance, and the mere selfish dread of the impenitent: the one is the feeling of children to an offended father, whom they still love, and own as their father: the other is the feeling of slaves, trembling before a master whom they do not love. One mark of the better sort of penitence is, that he does not even dream of a good place for himself, although he had been a dearly beloved son; he dares not now hope for anything beyond a hired servant's allowance.

This is the beginning of repentance in such sad cases, when men have wasted the grace of God. He mercifully puts it in their hearts by His Spirit to remember with longing regret their first good and gracious beginnings, to think of Him as a Father, however grievously offended, and to desire earnestly the very lowest place, so it be but in His house: to desire it, because they cannot do without it, yet to shrink from it, as knowing it far too good for them. This is the beginning of penitence, or rather the preparation for it but the next step is the great thing: